It looks like it could be the end for Louisiana Fed Judge Thomas Porteous. Perhaps Congress will figure out, enough is enough.

Judge Thomas Porteous Jr.

By Ben EvansASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON –It’s not the lifestyle of a typical federal judge: Five or six vodka cocktails during lunch; gambling with borrowed money; bankruptcy under a phony name; cash, trips or home repairs from lawyers; and a bail bondsman with business before his court.

Witnesses in the congressional impeachment case against U.S. District Court Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. paint a jarring portrait of the former Louisiana state judge appointed to the federal bench in 1994 by President Clinton.

As Congress wrapped up several weeks of evidence-gathering hearings this week, legal experts who testified before a House task force suggested Judge Porteous is a clear candidate to become just the eighth federal judge in U.S. history to be impeached and convicted by Congress.

WASHINGTON — The number of crimes involving violence, property and arson dropped in the first half of 2009 compared to the same time last year, according to the FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report released Monday.

The FBI said it was the third year in a row crime had declined during that six month stretch.

The latest report, which compares January-June 2009 to the same period in 2008, showed that violent crime dropped 4.4 percent while property crime dropped 6.1 percent and arson declined 8.2 percent.

More specifically, the FBI reported that murders were down 10 percent, rape down 3.3. percent and robberies fell 6.5 percent.

Other highlights were cited in an FBI press release:

* Murder was lower in all four regions of the country, with the largest decreases in the Northeast (13.7 percent) and the West (13.3 percent).

WASHINGTON — The self-proclaimed commander of a Neo Nazi group in Roanoke, Va., was convicted on Friday in federal court in Virginia of intimidating individuals by threatening them and posting some of their names, addresses, phone numbers and other personal information on a Neo-Nazi website, authorities said.

From 2006 to 2008, William A. “Bill” White of the neo-Nazi group American National Socialist Workers Party, went after a bank employee over a financial dispute and others involved in a federal anti-discriminatory housing lawsuit, authorities charged.

“These communications included late night telephone calls to the victims’ homes, during which he would identify himself as the leader of a white supremacist group; emails to the victims in which he would make threatening statements; and posting the victims’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information on neo-Nazi Web sites, sometimes accompanied by language advocating the murder of the targeted victim,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

He was also convicted of threatening a human rights lawyer from Canada and a university administrator responsible for implementing a diversity program, the Justice Department said.

Retired DEA supervisor John Cipriano, who investigated organized crime, has died at age 66, the New York Daily News reported. The cause of death was attributed to complications following a kidney transplant.

The Daily News reported that Cipriano retired in 1998 and joined the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board, where he investigated police misconduct up until 2005.

“He was a legend, a gentleman and the epitome of a DEA agent,”retired NYPD Detective Tommy Dades told the Daily News.